REACHING the grand age of 99, most people would enjoy sitting back with a good book.

But then Dorothy Pearce isn’t most people. Instead, she’s seen surfing the web, sending emails to her family and playing games on her laptop.

Miss Pearce, from Meadow Brook in Barton, Oxford, started a basic computer skills course with Age UK Oxfordshire shortly after her 96th birthday.

Last month the “silver surfer” turned 99 and is now on email, ‘SKYPEs’ her family in Wales twice a week and can often be found playing word search games on her personal laptop.

She said: “I suppose I was quite a late starter, being 96, but I caught on surprisingly well. I love the contact the computer gives me with my family and I also enjoy playing word games. It has changed my life.”

Miss Pearce, who has never married or had any children, was born in 1914 – 22 years before Germany’s Conrad Zuse invented the first freely programmable computer.

She said: “I left school at 14 and came to Oxford from London in 1941 to escape the Blitz and to work as a housekeeper. Until I retired at 60 I was a companion and housekeeper for a series of elderly people. But I never had any reason to use a computer and didn’t even touch one until I was 96 and met the Age UK IT teacher Ahmed.”

Miss Pearce joined the weekly Connecting Communities class at Northway Community Centre and hasn’t looked back.

She continued: “I love the fact I can SKYPE my two nieces and their families in Wales each week.”

Miss Pearce’s IT teacher Ahmed Rahman, 55, said: “I think the highlight for her has been being able to actually ‘see’ her family through SKYPE. She tells me this has made her feel even closer to them and their lives.”